Nita Kumar is the Brown Family Professor of South Asian History at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California. She is the author of The Artisans of Banaras (1988), Friends, Brothers and Informants (1992), Women as Subjects (1994), Lessons from Schools (2001) and The Politics of Gender, Community and Modernities (2007). Since 1990 she has also been engaged in innovative education in Varanasi, India, through both service and advocacy, working with children, teachers and families to develop curricula, fiction for children, arts materials and teachers’ training units.